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| In Trump Country |
By Marc Bochner
Liberals have lost their minds over Roseanne Conner being a Trump supporter. Take a breath and consider the opportunity this affords us as progressives. The opportunity to have the conversations Democrats have avoided for 25 years. Conversations that could help move the Democratic party back to the left and bring working class republicans with them.
If we are being honest, aren't the Conners likely Trump supporters? Hard working blue collar family in the midwest, almost lost everything including their home in the economic collapse. They have their daughter move back home out of economic necessity and are even forced to take less than prescribed doses of their meds because they can't afford the copays even with Obamacare. They certainly couldn't be blamed if they have lost faith in their government and the power brokers inside the government. Isn't that what many of the Trump voters told pollsters and journalists since the election? That they needed to believe that somebody could help them and were willing to take a chance on an outsider who promised to bring back jobs, shake things up and drain the swamp. Now even if they are starting to feel they have been duped, they are still rooting for the President to succeed, because if he fails we all fail.
Regardless of what you think about Roseanne Barr personally, The brilliance of the writing is that they are providing the American people and leaders an opportunity to have the conversations that we need to be having about the rigged economy, about hyper-partisanship that are tearing families and friendships apart and what 25 years of two corporate parties dominating our government has done to the labor vote. These are conversations lefties should welcome, because its the best path back to a people's party and populist policies actually having advocates in positions of power. It's a real chance to restore both democracy and the American dream. But it starts with us listening to each other rather than blind party loyalty, blaming, name calling and vote shaming each other in the absence of facts and policy. This truly isnt about whether or not you like Trump, it's about forcing Democrats to stop blaming everyone but themselves for losing entire voting blocks and look at what they have done and changed in policy to lose their loyalty and fail to generate any excitement for those who stay home without voting. They don't give voters anything to vote for, merely against, and even then not enough contrast from what they are asking people to vote against on actual policy.
If we are being honest, aren't the Conners likely Trump supporters? Hard working blue collar family in the midwest, almost lost everything including their home in the economic collapse. They have their daughter move back home out of economic necessity and are even forced to take less than prescribed doses of their meds because they can't afford the copays even with Obamacare. They certainly couldn't be blamed if they have lost faith in their government and the power brokers inside the government. Isn't that what many of the Trump voters told pollsters and journalists since the election? That they needed to believe that somebody could help them and were willing to take a chance on an outsider who promised to bring back jobs, shake things up and drain the swamp. Now even if they are starting to feel they have been duped, they are still rooting for the President to succeed, because if he fails we all fail.
Regardless of what you think about Roseanne Barr personally, The brilliance of the writing is that they are providing the American people and leaders an opportunity to have the conversations that we need to be having about the rigged economy, about hyper-partisanship that are tearing families and friendships apart and what 25 years of two corporate parties dominating our government has done to the labor vote. These are conversations lefties should welcome, because its the best path back to a people's party and populist policies actually having advocates in positions of power. It's a real chance to restore both democracy and the American dream. But it starts with us listening to each other rather than blind party loyalty, blaming, name calling and vote shaming each other in the absence of facts and policy. This truly isnt about whether or not you like Trump, it's about forcing Democrats to stop blaming everyone but themselves for losing entire voting blocks and look at what they have done and changed in policy to lose their loyalty and fail to generate any excitement for those who stay home without voting. They don't give voters anything to vote for, merely against, and even then not enough contrast from what they are asking people to vote against on actual policy.
The likelihood is that Trump lied about all of his economic rhetoric with what was clearly poll-tested talking points provided by Cambridge Analytica. But Trump had the good fortune of running against the candidate most associated with the job-killing free trade agreements so it didn't take much for those who have been crushed by our economy to roll the dice and hope Trump would deliver on any of those promises like getting us out of NAFTA, holding China accountable for unfair trade practices and killing the TPP. So far it's not looking good on those promises as Trump filled his cabinet with neocons and the same wall street figures who helped rig the economy for the rich against everyone else to begin with. He gave massive permanent tax cuts to the rich, has been rewriting an even more toxic version of the TPP into the rewrite of NAFTA and further deregulating wallstreet/ banking. Plus he has been a lose cannon and absolutely wrong on social issues.
Roseanne reboot gets political - Washington Post
The Conners have always represented struggling blue-collar workers from the heartland… you know what is now referred to as Trump country. But lets remember that many of those areas Trump won they used to be labor and Democratic strongholds. Many who now vote with Republicans used to be Democrats... like the Conners... Like Roseanne Barr. Remember the show ended the first time with the employees taking over their factory even.
After getting wiped out on nearly all levels of government and seeing two of the most unqualified people ever elected to oval office, the Democrats still refuse to look at their labor problem, and how they failed one of their biggest voting blocks, instead focusing on blaming everyone and everything but policy for why hard working Americans now vote against them and why that has led to losses up and down the ballot for Democrats.
After getting wiped out on nearly all levels of government and seeing two of the most unqualified people ever elected to oval office, the Democrats still refuse to look at their labor problem, and how they failed one of their biggest voting blocks, instead focusing on blaming everyone and everything but policy for why hard working Americans now vote against them and why that has led to losses up and down the ballot for Democrats.
What changed in the 90s to put the labor vote in play?
In 1992 the Clintons swept into office promising to bring big money donors over to the Democratic party, proclaiming they were the new Democrats who would usher in permanent Democratic control. Well, they did indeed get the big money corporate donors who now fund both the Democrats and the Republicans. To succeed and be supported in the Democratic party you are now required to be a big fundraiser, not necessarily a popular public figure.
In exchange for all this corporate cash they helped take down Glass Steagall wall street and banking regulations that kept our economy safe since the Great Depression and then did what Reagan and Bush tried but couldn't get done, pass the free trade agreements (NAFTA and Normalized Free Trade with China). Collectively these moves have devastated not only the country but the Democratic party as well.
The trade agreements which were desired by the corporate wing of both parties led to massive job losses as entire factories shut down and moved overseas along with the outsourcing of nearly all jobs that didn't have to stay (call centers, data entry, manufacturing, etc.) As jobs with living wages left the country entire communities were destroyed, wages stagnated for the jobs that didn't leave, and benefits got stripped away.
So now policies like Free Trade, deregulation, militarization and polluting the environment are policies of both corporate Democrats and corporate Republicans. The Clintons in ushering in this big shift were the ones who took away the opposition party to all of those policies thereby taking away any meaningful choice on the big issues. This is when blue collar workers stopped voting blindly for the Democratic party who seemed to abandon them on issues and were left searching for anybody to earn their votes by making their lives better. Largely both parties have failed to even fight for labor when in power and thus that vote has been fluid and in play with both parties pointing at each other rather than championing policies to fix what ails us.
In exchange for all this corporate cash they helped take down Glass Steagall wall street and banking regulations that kept our economy safe since the Great Depression and then did what Reagan and Bush tried but couldn't get done, pass the free trade agreements (NAFTA and Normalized Free Trade with China). Collectively these moves have devastated not only the country but the Democratic party as well.
The trade agreements which were desired by the corporate wing of both parties led to massive job losses as entire factories shut down and moved overseas along with the outsourcing of nearly all jobs that didn't have to stay (call centers, data entry, manufacturing, etc.) As jobs with living wages left the country entire communities were destroyed, wages stagnated for the jobs that didn't leave, and benefits got stripped away.
So now policies like Free Trade, deregulation, militarization and polluting the environment are policies of both corporate Democrats and corporate Republicans. The Clintons in ushering in this big shift were the ones who took away the opposition party to all of those policies thereby taking away any meaningful choice on the big issues. This is when blue collar workers stopped voting blindly for the Democratic party who seemed to abandon them on issues and were left searching for anybody to earn their votes by making their lives better. Largely both parties have failed to even fight for labor when in power and thus that vote has been fluid and in play with both parties pointing at each other rather than championing policies to fix what ails us.
Following the flight of the labor vote from 2000 - 2016 and how 3rd parties and voters were blamed to avoid policy change that would upset the donors.
In 2000 those “jobs” voters bailed on Gore who they blamed for free trade and globalization as part of the Clinton Administration. Much of the focus has been on Florida where Ralph Nader got 97,000 votes and Gore lost by 537 votes. Well if we look farther into those numbers, of the 97K to vote for Nader only 24K of them were Democrats. Still more than enough to make up the 537 vote gap. But wait exit polling tells a different story. When asked if Nader was not on the ballot who they would have voted for, more people said Bush than Gore, so Bush would have won by more not less if you take Nader off the ballot. Take this even further and notice that 308K Democrats voted for Bush in Florida alone (a pattern that was repeated in all high labor states crushed by free trade). Since those are both votes against Gore and votes for Bush that's a 616K vote swing, which is a much bigger number than anything we have discussed so far. Exit polling showed that most of those Democrats who switched to Bush did so because of jobs and the economy (jobs they lost to outsourcing). This was all broken down Daily Kos article The Ralph Nader Myth
But this still doesn't tell the whole story, Gore lost both his home state and Clintons home state. He also lost New Hampshire and Oregon where he ran a right-wing campaign and exit polling again showed that Democrats had crossed over to Bush in large enough numbers to swing those states for Bush. The Nader votes in those states were found to have favored Bush over Gore again had Nader not been on the ballot. This was all broken down on the Alternet article Why Nader is NOT to blame. Yet if you ask Democrats or the corporate media, they will tell you it was Nader. And thus we moved on from that election with blame and no policy discussion setting us up for more of the same in the election cycles to come.
George W. Bush promised jobs, Gore was linked to the reason jobs were leaving so the labor vote left the Democratic party and are now play. The labor vote came back to the Democrats in 2008 when they overcame a large number of Hillary voters who crossed to vote for McCain and delivered the win for Hope and Change. By 2008 George W Bush and the Republicans were sharing the blame for expanding Free Trade and further hurting labor.
By 2012 Labor was again questioning who deserved their vote as Obama failed to deliver or even fight for a living wage or to unwind the job-killing free trade. He even backed his own Free Trade agreement the TPP called by some NAFTA on steroids. They may have left Obama in 2012, but he was running against Romney who in a secret video told millionaire donors that “47 percent who are with him (Obama), who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.” They of course took this personally as it seemed an attack directly on them and mischaracterization of their situation. And who made up a large portion of those voters? You guessed it, the same working-class voters who had been crushed by Free Trade and had become dependent upon government to help sustain them as a result. So they stuck with Obama as the lesser evil that year but voted republican everywhere else on the ballot.
By 2012 Labor was again questioning who deserved their vote as Obama failed to deliver or even fight for a living wage or to unwind the job-killing free trade. He even backed his own Free Trade agreement the TPP called by some NAFTA on steroids. They may have left Obama in 2012, but he was running against Romney who in a secret video told millionaire donors that “47 percent who are with him (Obama), who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.” They of course took this personally as it seemed an attack directly on them and mischaracterization of their situation. And who made up a large portion of those voters? You guessed it, the same working-class voters who had been crushed by Free Trade and had become dependent upon government to help sustain them as a result. So they stuck with Obama as the lesser evil that year but voted republican everywhere else on the ballot.
Next, we get to 2016 in which the Democrats have still blamed everyone but their policies for being wiped out on all levels of government because they still have never been forced to look at why their base fractured with free trade and their abandoning the working class. Had they learned this lesson, clearly, they would have understood what primary polling was telling them and what Michael Moore was warning, workers who have been crushed by Free Trade have still not forgiven the Clintons and probably never will.
Hillary Campaign ignored Bernie Supporters' offer to help? After the primary was over, Bernie Sanders supporters tried to help the Hillary Clinton campaign. The Hillary camp was not interested. Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, breaks it down.
Moore warned that the working class in the Midwest, where the election was ultimately decided saw Hillary as the greater evil, not lesser. She helped sell free trade when Bill was President, She helped write and sell TPP when Obama was in office and Trump was promising to get us out of NAFTA, hold China accountable for unfair trade practices and to kill TPP. Well anyone who was paying attention to Trump's personal business practice of outsourcing jobs would have understood these were campaign lies, but Hillary as the queen of free trade couldn't engage Trump in that policy discussion. And thus that critical labor vote went enough for Trump to swing turn close wins into losses and swing the electoral college. Of course they will be disappointed by Trump policies, but every President and congress for Decades has disappointed. And again he was running against Hillary Clinton, so that vote was Trump's to lose, she in the eyes of many will always be the greater evil.
Once Hillary predictably lost the labor vote and with it, the Midwest and other critical states a populist Democrat would have won, the Democrats ran back to an old go to, avoid looking at why the voters left and blame 3rd party candidate Jill Stein for the tiny slice of the votes she got after they spent the general election running against her (Johnson and the memory of Nader as they did Trump). They even blamed Sanders who held way more of his primary voters together for Clinton than Clinton did for Obama (25% of the Clinton primary voters voted for McCain while only 12% of the Sanders voters voted for Trump and that 12% was largely the labor vote for Sanders while Hillary’s 25% was largely party loyalists). The PUMA - pro-Clinton, anti-Obama vote (mockingly referred to as Party Unity My Ass) is described by Progressive Army in the article Revenge of the PUMAs
Can Rosaanne get us talking about how to make American great again? Not in talking points, but in policy and real populism?
Moore warned that the working class in the Midwest, where the election was ultimately decided saw Hillary as the greater evil, not lesser. She helped sell free trade when Bill was President, She helped write and sell TPP when Obama was in office and Trump was promising to get us out of NAFTA, hold China accountable for unfair trade practices and to kill TPP. Well anyone who was paying attention to Trump's personal business practice of outsourcing jobs would have understood these were campaign lies, but Hillary as the queen of free trade couldn't engage Trump in that policy discussion. And thus that critical labor vote went enough for Trump to swing turn close wins into losses and swing the electoral college. Of course they will be disappointed by Trump policies, but every President and congress for Decades has disappointed. And again he was running against Hillary Clinton, so that vote was Trump's to lose, she in the eyes of many will always be the greater evil.
Once Hillary predictably lost the labor vote and with it, the Midwest and other critical states a populist Democrat would have won, the Democrats ran back to an old go to, avoid looking at why the voters left and blame 3rd party candidate Jill Stein for the tiny slice of the votes she got after they spent the general election running against her (Johnson and the memory of Nader as they did Trump). They even blamed Sanders who held way more of his primary voters together for Clinton than Clinton did for Obama (25% of the Clinton primary voters voted for McCain while only 12% of the Sanders voters voted for Trump and that 12% was largely the labor vote for Sanders while Hillary’s 25% was largely party loyalists). The PUMA - pro-Clinton, anti-Obama vote (mockingly referred to as Party Unity My Ass) is described by Progressive Army in the article Revenge of the PUMAs
Can Rosaanne get us talking about how to make American great again? Not in talking points, but in policy and real populism?
The gift of Roseanne Conner saying that jobs were the reason she supported Trump is that perhaps now Democrats and those who follow them blindly will have to look at and have the conversation with labor about what it will take to bring them home to the Democrats. With the Roseanne Conner character being someone many of those labor Trump voters can relate to, if she continues to talk about Trump and what he is or isn't actually doing to affect their lives, she may well be the perfect person to bridge the unbridgeable divide in this country and talk directly to the people who gave us George W Bush, Trump, and Republicans on all levels of government. She can speak to voters who used to vote Democrat as well as poor working class Republicans.
She can finally address the elephant in the room… why do Bernie Sanders and far left progressives poll better with Trump voters than conservative corporate Democrats and why are their policies some of the most popular policies in the country crossing party lines? Clearly Democrats still don't understand this or want to as they have continued to talk about the way to winning being running middle right corporate democrats in Trump country, so long as they have a good story like a military background and tick off at least one identity politics box like race, gender or sexual orientation.
This isn't a left-right thing, it never was. This is a populism vs corporatism issue. Whoever convinces the voters they will fight for them on the issues will win the labor vote. Populism is also the pathway to millennials as Sanders was by far the most popular with millennials. The millennials are getting more and more engaged. As they vote in larger numbers their power to affect policy grows. So next time you read or hear liberal talking heads talk about how you can win Trump voters by running middle right democrats in red or purple districts, know they are either lying to you or are so entrenched in their bubble, they have no idea how absurd and tone-deaf that notion is.
She can finally address the elephant in the room… why do Bernie Sanders and far left progressives poll better with Trump voters than conservative corporate Democrats and why are their policies some of the most popular policies in the country crossing party lines? Clearly Democrats still don't understand this or want to as they have continued to talk about the way to winning being running middle right corporate democrats in Trump country, so long as they have a good story like a military background and tick off at least one identity politics box like race, gender or sexual orientation.
This isn't a left-right thing, it never was. This is a populism vs corporatism issue. Whoever convinces the voters they will fight for them on the issues will win the labor vote. Populism is also the pathway to millennials as Sanders was by far the most popular with millennials. The millennials are getting more and more engaged. As they vote in larger numbers their power to affect policy grows. So next time you read or hear liberal talking heads talk about how you can win Trump voters by running middle right democrats in red or purple districts, know they are either lying to you or are so entrenched in their bubble, they have no idea how absurd and tone-deaf that notion is.
Both corporate parties will resist populism, create false narratives in the media, rig the process, cheat the voters and try to hold onto power. But people are waking up by the millions. The Sanders revolution inspired millions of progressives to challenge entrenched incumbents. The Parkland kids have inspired their generation of soon to be voters to get engaged and not for party, on an issue and policy. Keep talking about how you can make their lives better and restore the American dream on other issues and there is yet another trove of voters to help usher in change. The tide is turning and conversations like those hopefully we will see in the Conner household will help move the conversation to policy and away from blind team/ party loyalty. In the meantime, we can also be having these conversations with our family, friends, and co-workers on the issues we agree on instead of only focusing on the unbridgable divides (the blame game devoid of policy).
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